Richard and Emma Stevens and the new photography.

Richard and Emma Stevens were an enterprising couple from an Indian Army background. When they were stationed at Athlone with the Royal Engineers in the 1890s they visited Birr Castle Observatory and later built their own reflector telescope. Less than a year after the publication of Röntgen's discovery of X-rays, they were producing their own radiographs. Some images and also some of the equipment which they used have survived. The couple subsequently returned to India where Captain Stevens died in 1900. Emma, possibly the first woman to take X-rays, survived into old age and enjoyed a varied and interesting life.